Shelf-Stable Curry Entrees

My first low-spoons-food-options submission has gone live over at accessiblenom! (Or you can just read it here, right after the snazzy horizontal rule below the next paragraph.)

Definitely submit your own suggestions for food options with high food value (nutrition- and/or satisfaction-wise) but low effort required to prepare and eat them… and/or tips for avoiding allergens, ways around utensil-dexterity difficulties, dealing with texture intolerance, etc. over there, if you have any!
Let’s pool our knowledge, and remember that even if not everyone will need food options that fit your own particular medical needs, there will be someone; and resources like this can also be invaluable for anyone hosting a friend or family member with special dietary needs, too.

Shelf-Stable Curry Entrees have been a pantry staple in our household for years. They’re easy, delicious, and affordable.

You can stock up on them without worrying that they’ll spoil before you can use them all, because the use-by date is 2-3 years after production, and they’re usually fine for up to a year or two after the stamped use-by date, too. You’ll be able to tell if a package has spoiled without having to open it, though, because it will have swelled up (the pouches are designed to contain the gaseous products of decomposition without bursting, up to probably three or four times the volume of the contents at production time).

How simple are they to prepare? The packaging is a vacuum-sealed foil pouch with a notched, easy-to-tear-open (for people with moderately-impaired grip strength and/or moderately-impaired fine-motor ability; gripping/pulling with teeth, or cutting open with scissors, will also work) area at the top of the pouch. To heat them up, you can either open the pouch and pour the contents into a bowl to microwave them, or submerge the intact pouch in boiling water for a few minutes. Anecdotally, I’ve read that some strangers on the internet open the pouches and heat the contents in a saucepan; that would avoid the difficulty of opening the pouch when it’s hot from immersion heating, but would also mean the pan would need to be washed.

Because they’re fully-cooked, though, these curries can be eaten at room temperature, even directly out of the pouch with a long-enough utensil, which makes them ideal for emergency situations when power may be out. I find them palatable enough at room temperature, but some people with texture issues may not be able to eat them below certain temperatures depending on milkfat content or other factors.

All of the entrees are vegetarian, and many but not all are vegan. Some varieties contain nuts, seeds and/or seed oils not mentioned in the name of the curry, and some contain wheat and/or soy products, so check ingredients lists carefully if you have sensitivities to any of those foods. For those avoiding dairy products, be aware that “ghee” is clarified butter.

For readers unfamiliar with paneer, sometimes spelled panir, this is often translated misleadingly into English as cottage cheese, but it nothing like American cottage cheese. It’s made by a process similar to ricotta cheese, then drained of its whey, and usually cut into bite-sized square slices which resemble firm tofu (in appearance and texture) more than any kind of cheese.

The brand name we (teland.tumblr.com & I) usually buy is Kohinoor. Kohinoor’s website at http://www.kohinoorfoods.co.uk/products.asp?id=4 displays (some of) the varieties they sell. That link goes to the UK site but the same product, in slightly different-looking packaging, is also available in the States; in the northeast US, at least, they’re pretty much always available at Ocean State Job Lot, a chain discount store, for US$2 each. Sometimes regular grocery stores will carry one to three varieties (of Kohinoor or another brand) but they’re usually at least US$3 there, and sometimes significantly more.

Some manufacturers sell their heat-and-eat curries online, while others do not, but there are also numerous online retailers, in many countries, who carry one or more brands that can be shipped to your home.

Some other brands we have tried and liked include: 

Kitchens of India
USA:
http://www.kitchensofindia.com/US/Products/Ready-to-Eat/Dinners
http://www.kitchensofindia.com/US/Products/Ready-to-Eat/Biryanis

Brazil:
http://www.kitchensofindia.com/BR/Products/Ready-to-Eat/Dinners
http://www.kitchensofindia.com/BR/Products/Ready-to-Eat/Biryanis/MTk00

Canada:
http://www.kitchensofindia.com/CA/Products/Ready-to-Eat/Dinners

Germany:
http://www.kitchensofindia.com/DE/Products/Ready-to-Eat/Dinners
http://www.kitchensofindia.com/DE/Products/Ready-to-Eat/Biryanis

MTR
http://www.mtrfoods.com/products/product_category/2
(names of individual products are in image form, navigation to select specific products & display of product details — e.g. ingredients where available — are via javascript, so may not be screen-reader friendly)*

http://www.mtrfoods.com/international_business
contact info for international distributors, which can probably help shoppers interesting in locating a retailer near them, anywhere from Bahrain to New Zealand.

TastyBite (can be purchased directly from their website)
• entrees http://shop.tastybite.com/Entres/c/TastyBite@Entrees
• rice varieties http://shop.tastybite.com/Rices/c/TastyBite@Rices
• these things http://shop.tastybite.com/Meal-Inspirations/c/TastyBite@MealInspirations

Amazon.com sells a bunch of brands and varieties of ready-to-eat curries, including a few brands we haven’t tried yet (specifically, Ashoka, Haldirams, and SWAD). If you’re in the US, click here to see search results for “ready to eat Indian food” in the Grocery & Gourmet Food department. For people in the UK, Canada or elsewhere, there may or may not be a similar range of shelf-stable entrees available via your country’s or region’s Amazon site. 

Sometimes certain curries are available in a combo-pack that includes heat-and-eat basmati rice. Packages of both unseasoned and seasoned rice are also available. If you’re ordering online and shipping costs are an issue, obviously you’re better off cooking a big batch of rice at home and refrigerating or freezing meal-sized portions (or buying heat-and-eat shelf-stable or frozen rice from a store in your area). An important consideration with the combo-packs is how they’re packaged; some just have a second foil pouch filled with rice along with the pouch of curry inside the box, but often the curry and rice are in separate divisions of a microwaveable plastic tray sealed with plastic film, and the latter kind can be challenging to open even for people without grip-strength or dexterity issues. In our experience, the tray-packaged combos also aren’t as high-quality as the versions in the foil pouches, even within the same brand.

Note that almost all of these shelf-stable Indian dishes are spicy. Spiciness is so subjective, it’s always hard to know how someone else’s palate will react, especially because different people have varying tolerance for different kinds of ‘hot’ — chili pepper vs. peppercorn vs. cumin vs. mustard vs. horseradish vs. ginger etc., plus differences in preparation.

In our experience, the five least-spicy curries are the Methi Mutter Malai, the Paneer Butter Masala, the Mutter Paneer, the Dal Tadka, and the Dal Palak. The Biryani and Pulao varieties, which are seasoned rice rather than dishes to serve with or over rice, aren’t spicy at all.

Adding some plain yogurt (or raita, if you have it, though since we’re talking about least-spoons-available times, most likely you won’t) to any of these curries will help mitigate how ‘hot’ they are without — to our taste — rendering the meal too bland. There’s one curry called Kadhi Pakora (sometimes spelled Khadi Pakoda) that we always add yogurt to, even though it’s already in a yogurt-based sauce, because otherwise it’s too spicy for us.

One last note concerns the spellings of the various curry recipe names. These are always either transliterated or translated into English from Hindi or another language of south Asia that has its own alphabet, so neither translations nor transliterations are always consistent. I already mentioned the differing spellings and very bad standard translation of paneer, the homemade-style fresh cheese. Here are some more examples:

• aloo, meaning potato, may be spelled alu;
• dal, meaning lentils, may be spelled dahl; 
• mutter, meaning green peas, may be spelled muttar, mattar, or matar; 
• references to “gram” flour or “grams” (as an ingredient) mean dried beans, ones that have been ground in the case of flour; 
• the presence of chickpeas (garbanzo beans) may be indicated with channa / chana or cholle / chole / choley;
• both palak and saag are often translated as spinach but (as I understand it) saag is a more-general term for the green leafy vegetable part of a plant that’s also eaten other ways, as in the dish called sarson ka saag which is supposed to be made with mustard (sarson) greens… but is sometimes made with spinach instead; 
• pulao, a term referring to rice that is cooked together with seasonings and fruits, nuts and/or vegetables — rather than being a saucy dish to serve over rice — may be spelled pilao or pulav;
• korma refers to a cooking method, specifically that of braising vegetables and/or meat for a long time over low heat, and may also be spelled qorma, khorma, or kurma;
• navaratan (meaning nine jewels) may be spelled navratan or even navaratna, and, since the “nine jewels” refers to which nine vegetables, fruits and/or nuts are included in the dish, and the ingredients chosen can vary widely in different parts of India (and even at different times of year), this term is definitely a sign ingredients lists should be checked carefully;
• aspirated consonants’ extra ‘h’ may move around the word, commonly seen with bhindi/bindhi, ghobi/gobhi, khadi/kadhi, etc.
• some brands may label a curry by the city or region where it originated, for example Agra, Hyderabadi, Madras, Peshawar(i) or Punjab(i), while other brands omit that information, and, absent familiarity with Indian geography, it may not be obvious whether a word refers to an ingredient or a location; 
• just when you’ve learned the native names for your favorite curries, some brand may start labeling its products fully translated, for example Peas & Mushroom Curry instead of Khumb Mattar (or Kumbh Mutter)…

We hope this helps others in search of meal solutions for when very few spoons are available! Impairment-wise, I have MS-related limb weakness and poor grip strength, the extents of which vary depending on where I am in my relapse-remission cycle, and Te (teland.tumblr.com) has lingering post-stroke grip strength and fine-motor issues, along with some texture intolerance for certain types of food. Neither of us can stand to cook for long, either, in her case due mainly to arthritis and in mine due mainly to POTS/NMH. We both also have fibromyalgia; the chronic pain it causes sucks up spoons, but many FMS symptoms improve with higher protein and fatty-acids intake, both of which are frequent nutritional features of the shelf-stable curries, and of course the endorphin release associated with spicy foods provides some pain relief as well.

*I didn’t want to make this post even longer than it already is, but if there is interest and need, Te and I would be happy to transcribe the information at the MTR site (or any other site with info about and/or selling direct-to-customers any of these shelf-stable curries) that’s not navigable for anyone, and put it in a separate post. 

I couldn’t be happier that there are already two likes and a reblog, since that means (presumably) other folks who run low on ‘spoons’ (not referring to the literal silverware, but rather a brilliant metaphor used by people living with many different disability conditions) are finding the post helpful. Or I suppose able-bodied people who want and/or need cheap, easy, shelf-stable vegetarian meals might find the post equally useful… and they’re equally welcome to the info. Just please remember not to clean out a store’s entire in-stock supply — or take all the easy-to-reach packages and leave only the way-in-the-back top- or bottom-shelf ones! — so we can buy some, too, okay, able-bodied allies? :·D